Philip Roth Quotes
I needed my life as a springboard for my fiction. I have to have something solid under my feet when I write. I'm not a fantasist. I bounce up and down on the diving board, and I go into the water of fiction. But I've got to begin in life so I can pump life into it throughout.
Quotes to Explore
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One must always try to see the truth of a situation - it makes things universal.
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I live in a 'sky island,' a unique mountain valley environment where half the animal species of North America can be found.
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Ever since childhood, when I found out that the ultimate fate for all humans was death, sheer terror and morbid curiosity had been fighting for supremacy in my mind.
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One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.
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Ask any teenage girl to describe her perfect bedroom, and you'll get answers like 'a room with a private phone line, a place to hang out with friends, and for it to be way-cool and funky.' Ask parents the same question, and 'a locked door that opens on their 21st birthday' might top the list!
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There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous.
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The characteristic feature of modernity is criticism: what is new is set over and against what is old, and it is this constant contrast that constitutes the continuity of tradition.
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I spent my entire childhood with my father. I started my first business at 16, and we became business partners. He's not just a mentor and somebody that I look up to, but he's also someone whom I took work ethic and determination and all of those qualities from.
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Russia can be quite a dangerous place sometimes, but I never think about it.
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Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind.
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I have a dining room done in different shades of white, with white cushions embroidered in yellow silk: the effect is absolutely delightful and the room beautiful.
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If you want to live a long life, focus on making contributions.
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Virtue has its own reward, but no sale at the box office.
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Even the best parents have to spend so much time making ends meet that they cannot help their kids with homework or afford the extra tutoring that wealthier students enjoy. To address these unjust disparities, we need an early education revolution.
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I've learned how to stay humble. I don't want to get in over my head because when you do that it takes you off your game.
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I really like rustic mediterranean cooking. And I like trying out curry takeaways.
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But I have fun with the fright, work with it. You have to - that's your timing, that beat of excitement. And when I go on stage, it's just like taking a step into heaven. Poof, you know? Poof - and there I am.
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I'm fulfilled in what I do... I never thought that a lot of money or fine clothes - the finer things of life - would make you happy. My concept of happiness is to be filled in a spiritual sense.
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Meddling with another man's folly is always thankless work.
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My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there's a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop.
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Growing up in the country, you're left to the wilds of your imagination.
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They made all this up to justify questioning me. It's all made up. I don't know what happened. Whatever they say was all made up.
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I needed my life as a springboard for my fiction. I have to have something solid under my feet when I write. I'm not a fantasist. I bounce up and down on the diving board, and I go into the water of fiction. But I've got to begin in life so I can pump life into it throughout.
